The Romanov Stone

Kate searched again, this time reaching under Father Mikhail’s form. Beneath his right shoulder, her fingers touched something firm and round. Frantically, her hands dug at the rotting leather beneath the body. Whatever she’d felt, she couldn’t budge it.

If only she could shift the cadaver out of the way. Kate walked to the casket’s head. Leaning over, she tried not to look at the priest’s closed, sunken eyes. Inserting both hands just below the neck, she flattened her palms against his shoulder blades. His corpse felt like a hard leather husk.

Tightening her knees and belly for greater power, Kate lifted her body straight up.

Crack! A dry, splintering sound ruptured the silence.

The mummy’s head had broken off at the neck, and now lolled awkwardly back from its desiccated body. The priest’s upside-down, pie-shaped face blindly ogled her, his trunk gaping open toward the ceiling. From his now mutilated form, the stench of trapped, dead air and rotting clothes escaped like a volatile gas, enveloping her.

Kate stifled a scream and dropped the flashlight, fighting nausea.

Get hold of yourself! Pick up the flashlight and get on with it.

Kate slid her hands beneath the ruined cadaver until she again felt the object. It seemed surrounded by material, as if in a satchel or purse. Kate tugged the container and it started to move.

In an instant it lay in her hands, heavy, about the size of a pear, in a gathered velvet pouch.

In the darkness, the thirty-one-year-old professor sank to the floor and splayed her legs like a little girl. She clutched the pouch to her chest with both hands. You’ve found it! My God, you’ve actually found it!